Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Cosmological, Doxological, and Ethnological Apologetics

The first part of chapter two in my doctoral dissertation

Photo by Roberto Huczek on Unsplash

I am currently writing the dissertation for my second Ph.D., in Church History and Ecclesiology at Stellenbosch University. The tentative title of my dissertation is “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist.” As I complete each portion, I will post the segment for anyone who wants to follow my progress. I will not be including the footnotes in these posts, so each chapter will typically be a couple thousand words longer than what’s posted here.

• Chapter 1a: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Introduction”

• Chapter 1b: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: The Apologia in the Greek Barlaam and Ioasaph”

• Chapter 1c: “Aristides of Athens as Ecclesial Apologist: Syriac Text, Greek Papyri, and Armenian Translations”

2.1 Research question

What apologetics strategies did the second-century Christian apologist Aristides of Athens pursue in a context in which Christianity was perceived as a threat to the social order? The opening sections of the the Apologia of Aristides suggest one key component of his apologetics strategy. According to Aristides, a people-group proves its participation in truth by means of devotion and ethics that conform to the nature of the deity necessitated by the order and motion of the cosmos. Because Aristides saw people-groups as living evidences of the truth or falsehood of their claims about the divine, his argument was ethnological, with a focus on the devotion and ethics of each genus of humanity.

According to Aristides, the order and motion of the cosmos require a particular type of God. Yet how does one determine which deity is the creator that the cosmos necessitates? From the perspective of the Aristides, right conformity to the character of the creator of the cosmos produce right lives and right liturgies practiced in a community, while warped perceptions of the creator inevitably produce distorted worship and ethics. It is possible, then, to discover which God is the true God by comparing and contrasting the devotion and ethics of each genus of humanity. If a people’s pattern of devotion and ethics matches the nature of the deity necessitated by the order and motion of the cosmos, their God is the true God.

My goals in this foundational chapter are (1) to examine the form and function of the opening cosmological arguments in the Apologia of Aristides, with a particular focus on the pivot in the apology from a cosmological discourse to an ethnological discourse (2.2), (2) to determine which people-groups are most likely to have been compared in the ethnological discourse in the earliest edition of the apology (2.3), and (3) to clarify the nature and functions of Christian ethnological discourses in the time and context in which Aristides wrote his apology (2.4).

Right lives and liturgies practiced in a community reflect right conformity to the character of the creator, while distorted perceptions of the creator inevitably produce warped worship and ethics.

2.2 The opening arguments of the Apologia of Aristides

Because his ethnological argument is grounded in the character of God as the creator, it is not surprising that Aristides started his apology with a sweeping survey of the created order. After considering the sky, earth, sea, and celestial bodies, Aristides exulted at the order and motion he observed. According to Aristides, the order and motion he witnessed required a deity who is sole and supreme, the unmoved mover and singular sustainer of the cosmos:

ἐθαύμασα τὴν διακόσμησιν τούτων. ἰδὼν δὲ τὸν κόσμον καὶ τὰ ἐν αὐτῷ πάντα, ὅτι κατὰ ἀνάγκην κινεῖται, συνῆκα τὸν κινοῦντα καὶ διακρατοῦντα εἶναι θεόν· πᾶν γὰρ τὸ κινοῦν ἰσχυρότερον τοῦ κινουμένου, καὶ τὸ διακρατοῦν ἰσχυρότερον τοῦ διακρατουμένου ἐστίν.

I was amazed at the orderly arrangement of these things. Seeing the cosmos and all that is therein, that it is moved according to necessity, I comprehended the mover and maintainer to be God; for everything which causes movement is stronger than that which is being moved, and that which maintains is stronger than that which is being maintained. (Apol. 1)